An afternoon of baking - carrot cake

Just sharing a picture of a carrot cake I made recently - okay so its not the neatest icing in the world, but little miss J and I had fun making it and it sure did taste yummy! You can view the complete recipe here.

Chocolate fudge cake

Last week, we threw my friend a baby shower and more often than not, whenever we meet up with our friends, I'm the one to provide the dessert! Since she loves chocolate, I found a recipe for a Chocolate Fudge Cake.

The original recipe calls for chocolate buttercream, but since this was a very light cake, I opted to use a ganache made with 175 ml double cream, 200g dark chocolate and 25 g butter. Heat the cream and butter together until the butter is fully melted and mixture just starts to bubble.  Take the pan off the heat and add in the broken pieces of dark chocolate and stir.  The heat from the cream will melt the chocolate and you get a lovely silky smooth ganache.

Now I'm not very good with frosting - but I am trying and although it is not a neat finish, I was pretty happy with how this one turned out! :)

Cake for a baby shower - except its made with nappies!

I saw a nappy cake a few months ago at an arts and crafts fair and thought it looked great.  I did think the £30.00 odd price tag was a bit of a rip off though! I had a friend's baby shower coming up - so thought I'd give it a go.  I found a tutorial on youtube (what would we do without it???).

Turned out its dead easy to do and costs nowhere near that much - it does take a bit of time and patience though but the end results are well worth it! 

I wonder if I should start taking orders! (*pulls a cheeky face*)

Birthday special

I have been absolutely rubbish at blogging recently.  I have had so much going on and I was so hoping to have gotten back in to crafting in time for Christmas - but there is still time yet! Hopefully :)

Little Miss J celebrated her birthday last week and when I asked her what she wanted, all she said was "I just want a cherry cake Mummy!".  So how could I not make one?

I had never made a cherry cake before but managed to get a recipe for one.  The original recipe used lemon peel and almond essence, but I am not a big fan of almond essence so I left it out and made a few further tweaks to the recipe!  

125 g glace cherries (washed and dried)
225 g plain flour
50 g semolina
2 1/2 level tsp baking powder
150 g butter at room temperature
125 g golden caster sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
2 eggs
5 tbsp cold milk
Salt - a pinch

1. Toss the washed and dried cherries in 2 tbsp of flour and set aside. 
2. Sift together the flour, semolina, baking powder and a pinch of salt.
3. Rub in the butter.  Add sugar and cherries.
4. Beat together the eggs, vanilla essence and milk.  Stir into the dry ingredients.
5. Line two 7" sandwich tins and bake at 175 degrees celsius for about 20 minutes or until the sponge is firm to touch. 

You can make this in one big cake tin or a loaf tin and have it just as it is.  Since it was a birthday cake, I made some buttercream icing and spread it on one cake and topped it with morello cherries.  Then put the other cake on top to create a sandwich cake and then I iced the top. 

I was pretty happy with the result, especially since I don't usually frost cakes! And Little Miss J loved it too!

Happy Dussehra

Dussehra is the festival in the Hindu calendar which celebrates the victory of Lord Rama over the demon Ravana, thus symbolizing the triumph of good over evil.   In India, the build up to the festival is over nine nights with the tenth day being celebrated as "Dussehra".  I miss the festivities the most living away from India.  The music, the dancing, visiting friend's houses and the traditional 'Haldi kumkum' in the West and the giving of 'Vetala Pak' in the South - all things I grew up with.  

Living so many miles away from home, we don't always get to celebrate all the festivals with the fervour that we would were we living in India.  I love that festivals in India are so colourful, so vibrant and so full of life. 

I wanted to involve little miss J in making something for the house this Dussehra.  So we decided to handcraft a 'Toran'.  A 'Toran' refers to a decorative door hanging, usually decorated with marigold flowers and leaves of the mango tree, or a string that is tied on the door with the flower on it as a part of traditional Hindu culture. A Toran may feature colours such as green, yellow and red. 

I cut out some leaf shapes out of cardboard and little miss J painted them. 

I had made some flowers out of tissue paper. They actually look a lot like marigolds!!

Then I took some garden twine and stuck the leaves and flowers with some double sided tape.  Our 'Toran' now hangs on our door and will stay there till Diwali comes around - I'll follow that up with a separate post :).

Roasted stuffed butternut squash

The heatwave is gone and autumn has definitely come a knocking! I've pinned a host of autumn recipes I want to try, but I saw this recipe from Nigel Slater on a television show the other day and couldn't wait to give it a go.  I was not disappointed.  

I tweaked the original recipe slightly.  I used leeks instead of onions, threw in some chopped red pepper for colour.  I also added a tiny sprinkle of some cheddar on top, because I love my cheese and some finely chopped coriander to garnish. 

Dished up with a side salad - it was very very satisfying! :)

Its not a very heavy meal, so if you want to bulk it up, you're probably going to need some potatoes on the side.

Stewed plums with yoghurt

Usually when I try a new recipe, I've looked at it quite a few times before I actually get around to making it.  This one was an exception to the norm.  Little Miss J wasn't very well today and had gone off most of her food, but she loves yoghurt and I thought it would help soothe her tummy so I wanted to make it a bit interesting and include some fruit with it.  

I had some plums that needed using up, so using a combination of recipes I found on the internet, I made some stewed plums and mixed it into some natural yoghurt, except it turned out so good that it was what I had for dessert tonight! Mr. J who is not a fan of sweets & desserts kept stealing spoonfuls from me and then even asked for seconds which is no mean feat!

This would also be great served warm with some vanilla icecream and literally takes about 5 - 10 minutes of prep time.  The remaining 20 - 25 minutes is just simmering time and letting the heat do all the work!

Here's what you need (this makes roughly 4 - 5 small servings): -

2 cups plums, chopped into tiny pieces

1/4 cup dark muscovado sugar

1/2 cup water

1/4 inch stick of cinnamon (or you could use cinnamon powder if you prefer)

Put in all the ingredients in a saucepan and bring it to a boil on low heat and allow to simmer for about 20 minutes.  Allow to cool and mix with some natural yoghurt and dig in! 

Much better for the little ones that store bought stuff and tastes scrummy! 

If you have palm sugar (also known as jaggery), this would work great too.  However, jaggery melts and thickens quicker than muscovado sugar, so you might want to let the plums stew for about 10 minutes first before adding the jaggery.  You can vary the amount of sugar depending on how tart the plums are.